This Simple Trick Can Massively Cut Down on Your Air-Conditioning Bill

By: OC Staff, May 07 2018

Source: Antonio Mette from Wikimedia Commons

Oh, air-conditioning. The best invention since vaccines and the internet. How many times have we walked into an air-conditioned building and let out an “ahhhh” of relief as we escaped the blazing sun?

While we can all agree we love the effects of air-conditioning, we definitely don’t like what it does to our utilities bill. If you’ve ever been shocked by how much your electricity costs you, you definitely need to know this simple trick.

We Should Have Read the Manual

Source: Daderot from Wikimedia Commons

First and foremost: how many of us actually bother to read instructional manuals? The answer’s probably… Not many.

But if we did, we’d have discovered this trick a long time ago! We all know that our air-conditioner comes with various modes such as our favourite cool mode (represented by the snowflake symbol), the why-even-bother fan mode (represented by – duh – fan blades) and da real MVP, dry mode (represented by the water droplet).

We Often Use Cool Mode

Cool mode is the one most often used. It’s such a no-brainer, after all. We want a cool room, so let’s use cool mode! And it’s really effective. It does, however, guzzle up electricity because it’s working so hard. The way an aircon unit works is similar to the refrigerator, except on a much larger scale. Air is cooled within the air-conditioning unit due to chemicals that convert easily from gas to liquid and back again. This change in state means that warm air in our rooms are sucked into the air-conditioner, and get blown back out as cool air! Yeah science! If you take a look at your compressor, however, you’ll hear it running overtime, expelling heat. All this adds on to your electricity bill… Significantly.

The Dry Mode Will Save You Money

The dry mode, however, doesn’t actually blow out cold air. Nonetheless, the room will cool down. How does this work?? What kind of sorcery is this? Well, what dry mode does is remove humidity from the air in the room and when humidity is removed from the air, the room cools down!

The savings come from how dry mode works. Because it doesn’t have to actively cool warm air, it doesn’t use as much electricity. The cooling of the room is merely a side-effect of how dry mode works! And it’s not just good for your pocket, it’s better for the environment too. I’d say that’s a win all round.